Author Archives: Miss Penny Black

Majestic Princess Day 3 (at sea)

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Izaac had been super keen to try Bingo so Luke and I met him with Michael in the morning. They bought paper tickets but there were also tablets on offer that automatically kept track of which numbers came up. These cost more but, in the end, not one round was won by the tablet players so make of that what you will. The Bingo was hosted by ‘Lady Fortuna’ who I initially thought was a drag queen but wasn’t. I guess getting very spangly and having big hair is part of hosting Bingo. She told terrible jokes but kept up a steady patter during the round. Neither Michael nor Izaac won any rounds but it was kind of fun, if a little pricey at $40 for the 6 x 6 game sheets.

After all that excitement Luke went to the talk on Tauranga and managed to stay awake through most of it. Then he also went to the ‘welcome to cruising’ talk, which was about the various jobs onboard and other aspects of cruises.

I spent a short time in the gym trying to get to 10k steps for the day (eventually achieved) and we finished off the day playing Poker in Hollywood Lounge with Michael, Izaac, Dad and Luke. Michael brought chips and a wealth of knowledge, which was lucky because the rest of us needed a lot of help. I hadn’t played it before so I feel like I learned a lot, although unfortunately I came second to Luke.

The Hollywood Lounge is a huge indoor area at the front of the ship on deck 17. I’m told it used to be an adults-only area and currently has a pool and two spas, plus heaps of curtained-off cabana areas that people seem to claim for the whole day.

There are basically two ways to get food and drinks onboard, outside of the restaurants. First, you can go up to the bar or to the buffet and get it yourself. The other way to go is to use the Medallion app, possibly the most unpopular, frustrating and confusing aspect of life aboard. Everyone hates it but it does allow you to order food and drink to wherever you are on the ship. Your photo is attached to your account so waiters can find you by looking around for you. During the poker game we discovered a new down-side to the app: the bar can cancel your order at any time and if you aren’t keeping an eye on the app you won’t realise for ages. Also they don’t say why the order is cancelled, so if you’ve ordered drinks for several people, they might cancel the whole order because one of the items isn’t available at the nearest bar and you have no idea which item it was. Fortunately we had a waiter who told us what was going on so we ended up just ordering drinks individually. The wait staff seem as frustrated by the whole system as anyone else but complaining about it brings us all closer together!

We’re all looking forward to our first stop tomorrow; Bay of Islands! Fingers crossed the weather improves as it’s become progressively more foggy as we’ve gotten closer to NZ.

Sunset from our first evening aboard. Little did we know it wouldn’t be beat until we reached Auckland!

Majestic Princess Day 2 (sea day)

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Our first full day aboard. We filled in the room service card the night before and were impressed by the gigantic quantity of tea and coffee delivered. We also had some fruit, a danish and yogurt.

The ‘Princess Patter’ newsletter is delivered each evening for the next day, so we ticked off a list of things to do. The first two full days of the voyage were at sea so there was plenty of time to fill. We managed to fit in:

A fruit carving demonstration.

A very interesting and informative talk on the bay of islands.

A Poi demo. No photos as I was too busy joining in:-) . While I was doing that Luke got us coffee from the ‘best’ coffee place on the ship. It was not good, but it wasn’t filter coffee. If you love coffee and you’re going on this cruise maybe bring some chocolate coated coffee beans or something because the coffee onboard is 2/10. Just don’t bother – and I’m not even a proper Melbournian coffee snob.

For our 6pm meet up I grabbed a selection of cheeses from the buffet and we enjoyed them with our drinks at the Wake View.

In the evening there was a 50s night at the piazza so Luke and I hit the dance floor. Michael took a video but I don’t think I have time to load it today. Here’s a pic of the piazza though.

Westfield vibes… but it also reminds me of the inside of a geode. The ship is so plain on the outside but the inside is like a glittering crystal.

After getting quite hot from dancing, Luke and I headed to the top deck for a spa and found one that was unoccupied. The pool level is kid-central during the day, but in the evening it was very quiet. A lovely way to end our first full day onboard!

Majestic Princess: Cruising to NZ, Day 1

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A HCTP first: a family holiday featuring the entire Lenon family! Something that hasn’t happened for decades and our first holiday as a family outside of Australia. The whole thing was Mum’s idea a couple of years ago, and after Covid has now ebbed somewhat, here we are.

Many things have happened over the previous year. Mum suffered through extremely successful but painful chemotherapy after learning that cancer had spread quite significantly through her body. The news was a shock to everyone and, although she responded very well to the treatment, she has suffered permanent nerve damage in her hands and feet that makes her quite unsteady. Her hair fell out and she stopped dying it when it regrew, so it has gone from medium brown to snow white in a matter of months. It’s also curlier and softer. She is thinner and so is Dad. He is very stoic but it was very hard on him too.

The chemo finished in May and Mum regained some strength in time for Luke’s and my wedding, on Friday the 11th of November (our 11 year anniversary).

The event started with a family dinner at the Firehouse in Ringwood so each side of the family could meet the other. Our actual wedding was in our newly-landscaped backyard the following night, with a larger group of family and friends. Then we had a picnic at H.E. Parker Reserve on the Saturday afternoon with a jumping castle, petting zoo, face painting, an ice cream truck and coffee van. After the picnic we moved to the bowling club next door for dinner and dancing. Although I can’t say it all ran perfectly, it wasn’t far off and we had a wonderful time.

This is the longest preamble I’ve ever written but I suppose that’s my fault for not actually making these events separate posts of their own. Anyhow! We are currently aboard the Majestic Princess, a behemoth of a ship, on our way to New Zealand to (and I quote a woman I overheard at Circular Quay this morning) ‘ruin the landscape’ of every harbour we visit. Or maybe she said ‘blight the horizon’? Words to that effect, anyhow. While I am aware enough of the environmental horror of cruise ships, I am also aware that this is possibly the last time we’ll go this far for this long as a family so I’m just going to enjoy it, while still feeling weirdly like I’m aboard a floating mega mall that’s giving ‘last days of Rome’ vibes.

To board the ship, Luke and I first took the XPT (country train) from Melbourne to Sydney. At a not-insignificant 11 hours, it was about a quarter of the price of flights for that day. In hindsight, we should’ve just booked the overnight sleeper and saved the hotel cost, but I’d booked the Sir Stamford ages prior.

The Sir Stamford had an air of faded elegance, as befitted the name I suppose. On first glance it looked fancy, but the wallpaper was peeling a bit and things were slightly tatty. It was a short walk to the long pier though, so it suited us fine. The one thing to note was the hotel pool was undoubtedly the hottest pool I’ve ever been in. Michael reckoned it was about 35-36 degrees Celsius. I agreed and we’re pretty good at guessing water temperature.

The next morning Luke and I got up early and walked around a fairly deserted Circular Quay. This is the best spot in Sydney Harbour to view the Opera House and Harbour Bridge up close and it was nice to see it so quiet.

After our reconnoiter we went back to collect our family for breakfast. Izaac set the tone for his meals for the next fortnight.

We decided on a drink at the pub before our time to board. Arriving at the correct time might’ve been a mistake, since the queue at our boarding time (12:30) turned out to be enormous. We joined the bag queue, which took quite a while (attach your tags prior to arriving if you can) then went to the little bar by the terminal to wait for the line to die down as the day was hot and most of the line was in the full sun. If you’re doing a cruise I don’t know whether I’d advise you to turn up super early or just wait until the last of the line goes in, either would work better than turning up in the middle of the whole thing. Bring a hat or umbrella too!

The only shady spot.

We finally boarded at about 3pm and the ship sailed at 4:15. We spilt up to put our things in our rooms (Mum and Dad had a room slightly bigger than ours with a long lounge so we could all go sit in there together) and had a walk around to explore then had dinner in the big open buffet area.

Our finest achievement of day 1 was finding the Wake View Bar, where we’ve decided to meet every evening at 6.

And that was day 1!

Lamai Beach

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I am writing this from home, having discovered that the last two posts I wrote about Lamai (our last stop) have disappeared. This means that several paragraphs of me complaining about Justin Bieber on high (and I mean HIGH) rotation in every hotel, restaurant and bar in Thailand will just have to be done without – sad, I know. It honestly seemed as though some governing body in Thailand had issued the same 10 track CD to every likely establishment in the country and by the end of our three weeks I thought seriously about sticking a fork in my ears.

Lamai Beach

Audio-torture aside, we had a nice time during our last week. Lamai is a beach just south of the more famous Chaweng Beach, which runs down the eastern side of Koh Samui. This was our third trip to the island and we had decided to try Lamai as it seemed a bit quieter – the parade of hawkers, spherical and sunburned eurotrash, and whizzing jet skis of course has it’s charms (in terms of cautionary tales, perhaps) but we’d heard good things about Lamai.

Lovely lush tropical gardens in our resort.

We definitely experienced quiet. In the evenings the beach was almost deserted as it was the low season and some of the bars and restaurants were completely closed. Despite this, our resort (The Pavilion) was at least half full and there were families and groups out on the beach throughout the day. Only one jet ski at a time seemed to be in operation too, so that was also something.

Lamai main street.

A big sign on the beach warned that it was jellyfish season so I did get in the sea a couple of times but tried to keep Luke between myself and the open water.

On our second last night I made the mistake of looking up the kinds of jellyfish and related incidents to be found locally and scared myself out of going back in. Fortunately the hotel pool was perfectly fine – although Luke wasn’t happy that it had not been heated to bath temperatures.

We ate out every night and enjoyed a great number of 70-140 baht cocktails. If you’re heading to the area we highly recommend Pik’s Bar. They have a list of 140 cocktails and they’re all the equivalent of $3 AUD each.

Pik’s Bar

Lea decided Pina Coladas were the best thing since sliced bread and after her first we barely saw her without one in her hand, even at breakfast! Just kidding, of course. We didn’t usually start drinking until we’d spent at least 8 hours reading books on our sun loungers.

Our only activity, apart from eating, swimming, reading, and drinking, was watching the local gang of dogs wrestle each other up and down the beach. A form of entertainment familiar to everyone who has ever been to the coast of Thailand.

We became quite familiar with the pack and one morning I found one of them (who looked a bit like our old dog Penny) asleep on the walkway right outside our room. After that I bought a little packet of dog treats from the 7-11 and handed them out whenever they came near.

We did find a few really lovely places to eat in Lamai, one of which wasn’t Thai (all the Thai places are excellent, mind you) called Emporio Caffè.

The proprietor and chef was an Italian fellow from Rome who made the pasta by hand and shared some of his grappa and limoncello with us. The pasta was outstanding and so of course we went back two nights later. Although it was a very simple cafe it had the typical frescos. If you find yourself in Lamai be sure to go!

Luke and I left Samui on a very early flight and spent a night at the Novotel in Bangkok before a daytime flight back to Melbourne. I ended up with a headache from watching three movies and the entire available catalogue of Big Bang Theory (it’s the show I watch when there’s nothing better to watch) and disembarked at about 8:30pm to find Melbourne airport the busiest we’d ever seen it.

The lady managing the extensive Sky Bus queue told the people in line that the trouble was that the Cox Plate (a prestigious horse race), Pax (a games convention) and a Taylor Swift concert were all happening on the same weekend.

Once we got into the city we discovered that in fact the Taylor Swift concert had just emptied out from the stadium beside the station and there were crowds five deep to get onto the trains. We ended up standing up for the 50 minutes it took to get home and then walked the last kilometre. The guy at the local kebab stand spied us walking past (this was at almost midnight) and asked Luke if we were going hiking.

Arriving home was a bit weird. Last time we’d come back we’d had a house full of people and Penny to greet us. This time it was more like letting ourselves into another Airbnb. Luke had paid for professional cleaners to go through the house before we returned and they’d cleaned some things well – and some things not so well. A lot of our belongings were in boxes as friends had lived in the house while we’d been gone.

We lay down on a mattress in the spare room, turned out the light, and agreed solemnly that really, there’s no place like home.

Pik’s Bar

Chiang Mai, Thailand: A Day At The Elephant Nature Sanctuary.

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This was our first trip to Chiang Mai and I hadn’t heard a bad word about it from anyone – but I also didn’t really know what to expect either, except for markets, markets and more markets. My only goal for the week was to find a decent tailor and Lea wanted to spend a day with elephants.

Flying into Chiang Mai was certainly more impressive than landing in smoggy Bangkok. Big green hills covered in tropical forest sit quite close to city and, for the second largest city in Thailand, it has a relatively small airport and few tall buildings.

We caught a taxi to our hotel – Rimping Village. Sitting just over the Ping River from the heart of the city, the hotel had quiet and green grounds and a decent sized pool sheltered by an enormous rubber tree that was filled with epiphytes.

The hotel grounds were full of orchids of various colours, shapes and sizes as well as several frangipani trees. A little oasis in a very busy city.

One of the first Chiang Mai icons we became familiar with was the Iron Bridge (locals pronounce it ‘eye-ron’, this is important to know when telling a taxi driver where to go!), which didn’t look at that impressive to us by day but certainly attracted hordes of self-taking teenagers and fishermen at night. It also just seemed, despite being quite narrow, to be a place to just hang out. People of all ages draped themselves like wet socks over the rails as soon as dusk descended.

While the locals assured us it was winter (ha!) and did indeed walk around in jeans and jackets, it was still 34 degrees during the day and felt about 40 if you were out in the sun in the breeze-less city. We mostly stuck to the pool during the day and wandered out at night.

The Elephant Nature Park

This was our only whole day, relatively expensive, excursion in Chiang Mai. There are many elephant parks around the city but this one is exceptional as a refuge for elderly, injured, and mistreated animals (dogs, cats, buffalo, horses and more as well) and the respect and love the staff have for the animals is evident everywhere. If you are thinking of visiting an elephant sanctuary I highly recommend this one.

We were picked up at 8:30 from our hotel and our group of six for the day included a nice couple from the UK – Duncan and Fiona. During the hour’s drive out into the forest we watched a video on the rules of how to behave around elephants – most of which we ended up breaking at some point during the day.

Our guide was a funny young man named Dave whose love of elephants became more and more obvious as the day progressed. He told us about his favourite elephant dying recently of old age and how, for weeks after, he could not talk about him without crying.

Our first stop was a walk along a forest track with three female elephants. Dave and the mahouts gave us bags of bananas and sugar cane to put in the elephants’ trunks. It was a bit intimidating as they could almost eat them faster than we could get them out of the bags and being followed closely by a hungry elephant is quite a memorable experience.

Pete is pestered by a persistent pachyderm.

Next was a tasty vegetarian lunch in a hut where we waited for the next group of elephants.

We helped prepare food for elephants who were on a high-calorie diet after being semi-starved by their previous owners who wanted to keep the elephants small to make it seem that they were younger than they really were – younger elephants can be sold for more money.

We chopped up watermelon and made balls of rice and dried fruit that had to be put directly into the elephants’ mouths so they didn’t fall apart.

Apparently elephants don’t have to wait an hour after eating before going for a swim as we went straight to the river and got in with buckets so we could splash water all over the elephants. One went out into the deepest part of the river and completely submerged itself and rolled around. I was very glad to have my reef shoes for this part of the day as submerged and slippery rocks were a bit of a hazard.

To get to the main camp we got into rubber boats and did a little bit of white-water rafting down the river, passing some bathing elephants along the way.

The Elephant Nature Park lets most of its elephants roam free around the reserve with their mahouts, who are there to protect and help feed them. Newcomers are restricted to the inner grounds and sleep overnight in shelters with sand heaps(for lying against), water and four nightly feedings.

Dave with one of the oldest elephants at the park. I think she was in her 80s!

It was interesting to learn that the elephants at the park choose their mahouts rather than the other way round. Some mahouts come with their elephants to the park and some meet when they arrive. All the mahouts seem to spend most of the day lying in little cabana shelters or wandering next to their elephant. It would have been very interesting to talk to one of them about their job.

The last thing we did was walk around the sanctuary and see the newer or more injured elephants. One was completely blind thanks to a cruel owner’s punishment. Another had a deformed foot after stepping on a land mine. While the stories at the ENP are often tragic, it is heartening that places like this exist and so many people come to volunteer their time to take care of the animals.

An incredible and emotional day that we all enjoyed!

To finish, here are a few of the gorgeous dogs that are up for adoption should anyone visit the sanctuary and want to take them home.

Every one of the 600+ dogs at the sanctuary is named and many are adopted by people in other countries, especially Britain. No surprise to me after seeing all the dogs in the UK!

Doing Nothing At Lebua In Bangkok

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View from our balcony.

I have almost nothing to write about Bangkok because we planned on doing nothing and barely ventured from our hotel.

Luke’s parents, Lea and Pete, were meeting us there and we were all travelling through Thailand together for three weeks.

Luke and I arrived first in the mid afternoon after a ten and a half hour flight from London on which I slept almost the entire way. There is an immense feeling of satisfaction when this happens – like performing some kind of magic trick that makes a whole lot of boredom and discomfort disappear. Luke’s parents arrived late the same night so we met them at breakfast the next day.

The first morning we woke up to huge pink thunderclouds. The view from our balcony was magnificent.

As I have written previously, Lebua does an excellent breakfast buffet, even by Asian hotel standards. There’s food from almost every continent and whether you want crepes, bagels, hummus, roast pork, sashimi, salad, wonton soup, curry or even a bowl of humble cereal, your tastes will be catered for. Thanks to 3am jet lag every morning I made it down in time for a light six am breakfast then a return at eight or nine for food with everyone else.

Breakfast by the pool.

Speaking of jet lag, even though Luke and I came from the same time zone it seemed to affect us completely differently. I struggled for a week and a half with waking up super early and feeling like a zombie at 4pm, Luke sporadically woke up at midnight for several hours and had trouble getting to sleep in the evening. Why is this so? If you know please leave a comment!

After breakfast I would spend an hour walking up hill in the gym while Pete and Lea would hang out by the pool and Luke did some video editing. Pretty soon it would be time for the complementary afternoon tea with all drinks included.

The balcony outside the restaurant where we had afternoon tea.

Lea discovered she quite likes pina coladas (I mean, who doesn’t, amirite?) and we’d all get a bit squiffy before a quiet evening of looking at the view from our balconies and going up to the roof bar and trying to take photos while avoiding buying any overpriced drinks. And I do mean overpriced! The cocktails were all $20-$30 and one of the glasses of champagne was $100.

So, not the most thrilling post I’ve ever written but you can see why we like to stay here – complete indulgence! Although we didn’t spend a huge amount of time outside the weather was noticeably cooler than it is in April (on our other trips), being around 34 degrees rather than 40. Walking around at night (we did leave the hotel a couple of times) wasn’t a sweat-drenched nightmare.

Next we headed to Chiang Mai to experience a different side of Thailand.

Three Plays, and High Tea On A London Bus

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While in London Jess, Luke and I stayed at a flat in Camden that was in an excellent location for two reasons: first, it was only a block away from Camden tube station and second, because it had a huge glass window that overlooked a narrow street where van played dodgem cars – literally ramming each other to make parking spaces. As we watched I couldn’t help thinking how much my dad would enjoy sitting 5ere and watching the mayhem play out below.

The apartment, like all AirBnb places under a certain price, had its oddities. Like 18 halogen downlights in the small lounge/kitchen space and a bathroom fan switch that was so high up it almost touched the ceiling. Weird.

While in London we did a bunch of things! Here they are in a roughly chronological list.

The Play That Goes Wrong

Andrew and Lila came down from Cambridge with us and we bought them tickets as a thank you present for letting us use their house as a backpackers hostel.

We had seen a bit of the play on YouTube and it didn’t disappoint live. Much hilarity, both slapstick and more clever humour. Well worth the ticket price.

High Tea On A London Routemaster Bus

My friend Lorraine and her daughter Rosie were in London at the same time as us so Jess and I joined them for a lovely afternoon tea on a bus!

We arrived a little early and had a chat to the bus driver who was a proper cockney.

I booked an upstairs table and we had a lovely time! They catered for vegetarian and gluten intolerances (Jess and Lorraine) and the food was good!

After we’d eaten the food pictured above the scones were brought out and these were the first warm scones we’d been served in all our UK afternoon tea experiences. We were very pleased!

I will admit that we didn’t pay all that much attention to the commentary and the only thing I really remember is passing the ship front from the movie Kingsman.

Not a cheap experience, at £45 each but worth it for the special treat.

Cereal Killer Cafe

Jess’ friend Erin joined us for the next few days and we all made an early trip to Cereal Killer cafe to see what the fuss was about.

Although not all he ones pictured above were for sale. I had Oreo and a peanut butter cereal mixed together. It was delicious but tasted more like dessert than breakfast. There was literally nothing healthy on the menu.

The decor was neat – very 90s bedroom chic.

A Comedy About A Bank Robbery

At the end of the first play we saw they announced that the same production company was putting on another play in the West End so we went to see that too.

This time it was just Luke and I – Erin and Jess went to see The Lion King – and we LOVED it. It was funny and clever and they set design was fantastic. Go see it if you get a chance! We bought tickets on the day and still managed really good seats. The theatre itself was beautiful- like a wedding cake turned inside out.

My photo doesn’t really do it justice.

The Importance of Being Ernest

We saw this production on our last day and it wasn’t bad. I’ve seen it before many years ago and I like all the Oscar Wilde I’ve read but I wasn’t thrilled by this interpretation. It felt rushed and the two male leads seemed to be shouting most of the way through.

Camden

We all did quite a lot of walking around Camden. We looked at street art.

And I went with Jess and Erin super early to take a photo at… well, you can guess where.

On our last day Luke and I took a walk around Hampstead Heath and looked at all the dogs. I’ve tried to go to HH a number of times previously but my hay fever has always flared up. Autumn was definitely in the air this time so I was safe.

Our last meal in London was a return to Five Guys, a burger chain Luke’s Aunt Sue had recommended. We enjoyed it a lot more this time as we’d been able to read the menu, unlike our attempt in France;-).

Also Oreo shakes are amazing!

So that ends the European part of this trip! We packed our bags and boarded our Thai Airways flight for Bangkok. I spent most of my awake hours on the flight thinking about how I could manage to come back next year to do more hiking in the north of England. We’ll see!

The Peak District and Makeney Hall

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Apologies to the handful of people who check the blog with any regularity, I’ve really fallen off the regular-posting bandwagon these last few weeks. Partially because we’ve been lazy and haven’t done a lot of noteworthy things and partly because when there’s other people around I try to be more social. Hopefully I’ll catch up before we get home in a week and a half.

We start at the end of the last post – catching the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool.

After a 4:30am breakfast, the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool disgorges it’s passengers at the cruel hour of 5:30am, which meant we had a long day to fill before booking into our accommodation for that night.

Jess and Luke loved the croissants onboard and we could see why all the truck drivers were virtually spherical. Excellent food and service on the overnight P&O ferry!

We filled our day by first taking a drive to Edale, a little village in the Peak District and well known to me as the start/end of the Pennine Way, England’s most well known long distance trail. Possibly also it’s most grueling too. Not that I’ve done it, but it was nice to take a drive through the gorgeous hills and then stop for a cup of tea at the campsite cafe, once it opened. We were seriously early.

A classic British pub. Hopefully we’ll be back one day during opening hours.

Next we drove to Chatsworth farm house and cafe for a slice of cake and more tea. The range of stuff on sale was very tempting (and pricey) and I bought a few things for Andrew and some tasty treats for us too, including a ginger brack (a type of cake that keeps well) to put in my package of stuff to send home.

Fancy farm shop pies.

After the cafe we took a quick drive through the actual Chatsworth estate but we were all a bit too knackered to be bothered with the entry price and doing much walking around. The weather was glorious though and the building looked magnificent.

Last stop before our hotel was a leisurely walk around Bakewell, a very pretty, touristy and well-kept northern town. We looked through a few shops then made our way to Makeney Hall. As I’d thought the Lake District was too far to drive and our preferred hotel there wasn’t available anyhow and we thought it would be nice to spend one night in a relatively fancy country house/hotel and Makeney Hall looked nice and was in about the right location.

The hotel ended up looking quite nice on the outside but having a somewhat run-down feeling in the interior. Tatty carpet, dirty windows in the restaurant, and the bedrooms were pretty ordinary.

We had booked an afternoon tea and we were the only people in the spacious dining room. The food was nice and the ambience improved once we disconnected the country/pop music playlist on the staff iPad and connected my phone with more suitable classical music. Luckily the staff weren’t fussed.

All in all, not a hotel I’d recommend but we enjoyed taking a walk in the evening and watching the rabbits and squirrels in the garden.

The next day we drove to Cambridge for two nights then spent our last week in London, where we saw a number of plays and had high tea on a bus! More about the next post.

Ireland: Dublin

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We only spent a day and a half in Dublin but we did a bunch of stuff!

We stayed at a pub/hostel that was a bit grotty but the location was great.

We visited the National Portrait Gallery.

Luke met an American lady who’d come to Dublin just to see this Caravaggio.

Jess went on a Viking bus/boat tour and a walking tour while Luke and I walked around town and then sat in a pub (just for something different). We did see the statue of Molly Malone.

Guess which bit you rub for luck?

Dublin has some shops with funny names. Also people in Ireland really love knitwear.

We also went to a comedy night – there is so much comedy in Dublin! If we’d known we might’ve booked tickets to something decent. As it was we saw three guys in a basement and they were ok. In the same pub there was a ukulele jam happening. People brought ukuleles and were given music books and all played along together. It was funny to watch.

Hrm… actually, we didn’t actually do all that much as there wasn’t much time. We enjoyed Dublin though and were looking forward to another fun ride on the ferry back. We ended up with the same kitchen crew as the way over and they remembered Jess was a vegetarian, which was pretty impressive. We slept a lot better as the sea was not as rough.

Next: driving through the Cotswolds and staying at Makeney Hall.

Ireland: Dingle

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Dingle was definitely the highlight of our time in Ireland. It’s a little town on the west coast of Ireland in County Kerry and it’s the capital of traditional music. We had three nights booked at John Benny’s pub in the middle of town and stayed in an apartment out the back.

The first night in town we had a walk around and stopped in a few venues. The first had traditional music, the second had a guy with a guitar who played covers and used a loop machine. The third place was the hotel we were staying at and had a duo comprising of a young woman who sang and a man playing the guitar. They mainly sang covers and their own songs, not Irish songs. I’d expected every place to be doing trad music but the variety we encountered was good.

On the second night Jess booked us tickets for a concert in the local music shop, only a few doors down from where we were staying.

The show was mainly the man who’d played guitar at our hotel the night before (he was very good, he also sang) and a woman who sang and played the accordion. They explained a bit about trad music and the show was great plus it included half-time Irish coffees!

Luke and Jess went to another concert the next night which they said was even better. I stayed by the fire and read my kindle.

We didn’t just listen to music though. We took a drive around the Dingle Peninsula and were lucky to get great weather.

The views were absolutely spectacular. There were also lots of hills that looked like great walking and made me wish we had more time to explore.

We took at look at some ‘famine cottages’. While the layout was basic there was a lot of information displayed about the history of the area and the inhabitants of the cottages and what happened to them as a result of the potato famine.

Of course we also spent time in Dingle shopping and eating. I looked longingly at several pairs of Hunter boots but in the end decided I could order them online rather than lug them around Thailand.

As we left Dingle we stopped off at a very scenic little lough where took a bunch of photos and enjoyed the serenity.

Next: Dublin!